This invention relates generally to computerized photograph albums, and more particularly to creating a computerized photograph album based on a sequence of digital images.
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document may contain material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever. The following notice applies to the software and data as described below and in the drawings hereto: Copyright (copyright) 1999, Sony Electronic, Inc., All Rights Reserved.
Digital photograph album software allows a computer user to arrange digital images, such as photographs, into computerized albums. Additionally, Internet users can upload digital images to various web sites to create online photograph albums that they, their family and friends, or the general public can enjoy. To facilitate the creation of the photograph album, the user relies on pre-written electronic templates. The templates are frequently in the form of a storyboard containing a series of images that indicate the subject matter of the images that should appear in the photograph album. The number of pages in the photograph album may also be fixed. However, the user is typically provided little or no template editing capability. Therefore, the user that has more images, different images, or is missing one or more images must adapt the images to match the template instead of having the template adjust to match the images available.
A photograph album system dynamically creates a computerized photograph album from a set of digital images. The photograph album is based on a pre-designed template that contains a series of scenes. The system obtains the set of digital images, such as photographs, from a user. Each image is associated with one of the scenes in the template. The system automatically modifies the template to correspond to available images before arranging the images in the template to create the photograph album. The photograph album system can save the modified template as a new photograph template and also allows the user to modify the template prior to supplying the images. In another aspect of the invention, each scene in the template has been assigned a number of photo slots, which are adjusted to match the number of images associated with the scene. Additionally, a user may be required to compensate the owner of an online photograph album web site for an album.
The photograph album system allows the user to start with a basic album template, perhaps created by a professional, and adapt that template to the particular images the user has, thus creating a personalized album. It also enables the user to modify and reuse a template directed to a special event as a guide for photographing such an event.
The present invention describes systems, clients, servers, methods, and computer-readable media of varying scope. In addition to the aspects and advantages of the present invention described in this summary, further aspects and advantages of the invention will become apparent by reference to the drawings and by reading the detailed description that follows.